As metamorfoses do trabalho nos territórios das plataformas digitais do Rio de Janeiro

Abstract

In view of the socioeconomic changes caused by the use of technological platforms as service intermediaries, our objective is to analyze the technological transformations that have taken place in the Brazilian geographic space and in social relations during the first two decades of the 21st century. Digital work platforms control and subordinate people and production relations, as tasks become progressively dependent on the mediation established by companies. The use of technologies has always been involved in the processes of work development and, in recent decades, they have been applied to provide infrastructure and support for digital platforms, generating intense processes of precariousness. Dialectically, technologies play a role, but they are not the only vector of changes in the world of work. They are subject to specific conditions, such as regional characteristics and their position in the international division of labor (central or peripheral countries). Thus, new forms of work – and of working – have emerged in recent decades both as a reflection of the reorganization of production processes and capital, and due to the role of information and communication technologies. In this sense, the main objective of this research is to analyze the main characteristics of the transformations that the world of work has been experiencing in the first two decades of the 21st century and their impacts on Rio de Janeiro, particularly with regard to the use of new technologies linked to capitalist platforms and in relation to the nature and process of these changes in the control, organization and regulation of work through applications and platforms. We believe that it is necessary to use historical-dialectical materialism as a method for understanding social relations, which are always spatial, and we seek to make this very clear by understanding that the Marxist debate and its association with the recognition of class interests present themselves as an enlightening perspective for revealing the transformations underway in the world of work and the processes of platformization of work in Rio de Janeiro.